A utility provider may install and maintain infrastructure to provide utility services to its customers. For example, a water utility provider may implement a fluid distribution system to distribute water to its customers. Metering devices may be utilized by the utility provider to determine consumption of the provided utility (e.g., water, electricity, gas, etc.). The utility provider may implement various devices or computing nodes throughout the fluid distribution system to monitor the status of the fluid distribution system, including condition assessment for the pipes used therein, predicting attenuation based on type of pipe and type of surrounding soil, and graphically mapping efficient layouts of the computing node locations based on propagating distances.
Due to the rapidly escalating costs of potable water, the scarcity of fresh water supplies, the increasing costs for water treatment and distribution, and the potential for costly damage to subsurface infrastructure, accurate condition assessment and minimizing leaks in water distribution systems is a goal of both public and private water distribution utilities. If a leak is not particularly conspicuous, it may go undetected for months at a time without repair. It is therefore important to be able to assess pipe degradation early before leaks.
Several techniques for condition assessment currently exist for direct condition assessment, including visual inspection, leak detection systems, wall thickness measurements, soil testing, corrosion monitoring, and analyzing break history in similar pipes in the network of water pipes. Leak detection systems utilizing acoustic monitoring can also be used to perform condition assessment by providing an indication of average wall thickness between two measuring points. These acoustic monitoring systems are good screening tools for detecting widespread corrosion and wall loss, they are non-intrusive, and generally are low cost. However, current techniques utilizing acoustic monitoring are not reliable and may still require unnecessary and costly visual inspection. There is therefore a need for a condition assessment system that accurately determines condition assessment in a network of water pipes without having to rely on visual inspection. Furthermore, there is also a need that enables reliable placement for computing nodes for a fluid distribution system by utilizing graphical mapping and acoustical understanding of sound propagation in the pipe network.